Hans Sauer † and Alessia Bauer (Eds.), To Instruct and to Entertain - Medieval Didactic Dialogues. The Old English Prose Solomon and Saturn, the Middle English Master of Oxford’s Catechism, and their reconstructed Latin source; the Old English Adrian and Ritheus, and the Old Icelandic Dialogue between a Pupil and his Master (Middle English Texts 67). Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag, 2023. Christopher Blake Shedd This edited volume of medieval texts serves a useful aim, namely making available works of a common theme (medieval didactic dialogues) and situating them in their respective contexts and alongside each other. The book is divided into three main parts: (1) a thorough introduction of the texts in which their provenance, similarities, language, and possible sources are discussed in detail; (2) the texts themselves and their critical apparatus; (3) commentaries on the texts. The texts treated in this volume are the Old English texts Solomon and Saturn (SolSatP) and Adrian and Ritheus (AdRit); the Middle English Master of Oxford’s Catechism (MOC); and the Old Icelandic Spurningar lærisveins og andsvör meistara (SLAM, trans. ‘Dialogue between a Pupil and his Master’). Following these three parts are a glossary of terms from the OE and ME texts along with an index of personal and place names and a bibliography. The introduction offers a condensed description of the genre of medieval didactic dialogues followed by a brief précis of previous editions of the four texts analyzed in this volume. This is accompanied by a succinct treatment of each of the respective manuscripts with its provenance and a detailed listing of the individual texts in each of the manuscripts. These biographical sketches are rounded out with observations from the authors on the significance of these texts in the manuscripts themselves and also in the broader historical and literary contexts. Eight color reproductions of the manuscripts showing excerpts of the volume’s texts as well as images depicting events and themes raised in the dialogues conclude this part of the introduction to the physical manuscripts and lead into an analysis of AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Agenda: Advancing Anglophone Studies Band 49 · Heft 2 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen DOI 10.24053/ AAA-2024-0028 Reviews 258 their contents. Integral to facilitating a comparison of the texts is Sauer and Bauer’s detailed analyses that are coded to the questions in the texts and are cross-referenced. This means that when one piece of information is mentioned in one text, then the corresponding mentions in the other texts (when present) are provided. Numerous tables attest to the cross-referenced questions and answers shared in the texts and also highlight when information is absent in some of the texts. From this thorough analysis Sauer and Bauer (xxxvii) then provide a tentative reconstruction of the development and interrelatedness of the English texts with reference to the hypothesized Latin original(s). Much of the information found in the volume’s texts draws on a wealth of sources ranging from the Bible (canonical and apocryphal texts), medieval etymologies and observations of nature, and Jewish traditions among others. Evidence for the correlation between the dialogues and these sources (or parallels) is provided with further cross-referencing to other dialogues in which the same information is found. The introduction concludes with a thorough but not exhaustive analysis of the linguistic characteristics of the texts with the Old Icelandic receiving short shrift. In regard to the Old and Middle English texts much of this analysis lends itself to informing a more precise understanding of the periodization of English and offers years of composition based on this analysis. The texts themselves and their critical apparatus comprise thirtyeight pages of this 143-page volume. This speaks not only to the relative shortness of the texts but also to the copious details provided in the introduction and the commentaries. Solomon and Saturn (SolSatP) and Master of Oxford’s Catechism (MOC) are presented together given the high degree of shared material, ostensibly from a common Latin source, one which has been reconstructed in this volume. These texts are presented on facing pages in the following arrangement of four columns (two per page, left to right): (1) a postulated Latin reconstruction of the question-answer sequences, (2) SolSatP, (3) MOC MS Harley, and (4) MOC MS Lansdowne. The benefit of this layout is immediately apparent in terms of ease of comparison; the juxtaposition of the two extant manuscripts of the ME texts also allows for quick assessment to be made of variation between the manuscripts. AdRit and SLAM are presented separately with numbered question-answer exchanges. The critical textual apparatus for each text (save for the reconstructed Latin text) offers a listing of editorial readings with explanations as to the state of the manuscript where relevant. The commentaries reflect a careful, thorough inquiry into each text. Owing much to the previous edition of SolSatP and AdRit by Cross and Hill (1982), the commentary on and translations of SolSatP along with MOC are organized by question-answer sequence with each dialogue being translated into present-day English and followed by a discussion, part of which also offers explanation for choices made with the reconstructed Latin text. The commentaries are far-reaching and address Greek, Latin, and French Rezensionen 259 sources. Elements from AdRit that also appear in SolSatP are covered in this section as well, which means only those elements unique to AdRit are covered in its commentary (where relevant, the reader is directed to the corresponding question-answer unit in the previous commentary section). Likewise, the commentary on SLAM also directs the reader to the commentaries on SolSatP and MOC for shared elements while elements unique to SLAM are elucidated in its own commentary section. In the SLAM commentary a pictorial representation of medieval cosmology supplements the analysis of one of the question-answer sequences, namely SLAM 22. The strength of this volume lies in the juxtaposition of thematically and formally similar texts - the previous (and relatively older) editions of individual texts have not offered the opportunity for comparison that this volume does. This book will be of particular interest to medieval scholars in the fields of linguistics, literature, and religion; those with little or no knowledge of the languages will also find the texts accessible with the translations provided in the commentary sections as well as with the streamlined glossary. The conspicuous lack of a glossary of the Old Icelandic text might speak to an intended audience of Sauer and Bauer’s text very familiar with Old Icelandic; however, this seems unlikely. At any rate, the translations provided in the commentaries essentially render the glossaries of secondary importance in this book. The absence, however, might speak to a less fully realized integration of SLAM into the volume as a whole, the authors’ assertion of having taken SLAM “somewhat more systematically into account” notwithstanding (39). This can also be seen in the cursory treatment of the language of SLAM in the introduction in contrast to the more extensive treatment of Old and Middle English in the other texts. Nevertheless, previous research (e.g., Sauer 1997) has laid the groundwork for this study by addressing some of the issues raised in this volume and thus allows for more exhaustive treatment here. This results in a text by Sauer and Bauer that furthers a nuanced understanding of the texts themselves, their interrelatedness, and the possible shared Latin source(s) of such question-answer type medieval dialogues. Christopher Blake Shedd University of Klagenfurt